


Gracious In Defeat (the MCU's "What if?")

by risibleWorld



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Death: Captain America, Civil War broke my heart - twice!, Gen, Hurt Tony, Hurt Tony Stark, I don't know, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Civil War (Marvel), Tony Stark-centric, Tony tries to get over Steve's betrayal, Tony-centric, What If comic series for MCU, but Steve lives on, some dialog taken/slightly changed from What If? Civil War, tony almost dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 19:31:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7476963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/risibleWorld/pseuds/risibleWorld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What If?<br/>What if things had gone differently and Civil War had found a different outcome? Tony is about to learn what would had happened if...<br/>Sometimes, not knowing is the greatest blessing of all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gracious In Defeat (the MCU's "What if?")

**Author's Note:**

> My favorite comic of all times is actually "What If? Civil War", so I wanted to create a What If?-scenario for MCU as well.  
> I tried to stick to the original dialog, but changed it, so it fits the movie-verse -- or at least I hope it does ^^
> 
> Now, enjoy the read! :*

** Gracious In Defeat (What if...) **

 

The compound‘s hallways are empty these days, its room are deserted. It’s cold and unfriendly, threatening in an inenarrable way. If you enter, you can never escape its crushing darkness again. Silence has fallen over the building like a blanket that has buried every sound beneath. Every word is dowsed the moment it leaves its speakers mouth.

 

The lab/workshop is the worst. Things are demolished. Empty bottles have gathered, some are overturned and amber liquid has pooled around them. Nasty stains and shards of glass tell the story of drinks smashed against the wall. Untouched food is left to mold on the tables. Someone has lived down here _(not lived, vegetated)_.

 

There’s a letter, amidst all the mess _(ha, literally!)_. A lonely letter that holds no explanations and no apologies. Because there are men too proud to apologize or there are men not worth an explanation—who knows?

There’re also the remnants of an old-fashioned flip phone. It’s crushed, its parts are scattered to the four winds within the spacious room.

 

It’s the New Age. It’s what they’ve created. Some are hiding away like criminals, separated from their families and loved one's and others just ... continue to exist.

 

 _(He still thinks he’s stood on the right side of this altercation.)_ He’s just not so sure anymore it has been worth it to start with.

 

In the end, there has been no winner _(he knows it)_.

Rhodey has lost his ability to walk.

Clint has lost his family.

Natasha has lost a place where she belongs.

Wanda has lost Vision and vice versa.

Ant Man has lost his daughter.

T’Challa has lost his father.

Captain America has lost Bucky again _(he’s not **the** Bucky back from 1900-and-something, can’t Captain Backstabber see that?!)_.

And worst of all, Peter got pulled into his whole mess _(because of him...)_.

 

And he himself, Tony? He’s lost nothing. He’s only realized he’s had nothing to start with; nothing in his bare hands but smoke and illusions that would turn into thin air the moment he tried gripping it. Yeah, he’s been the only one not losing anything.

There’s been nothing to lose from the very start.

 

He’s allowed himself useless things like **trust**. Now, he’s come back down to earth with a bump. He can work on picking himself up again now; build himself up again from the scratch; he’s done it before. No difference this time;

 

He’s Tony fucking Stark. It’s what he does: instead of wallowing in self-pity, he creates stuff. It’s what he’s always done; after Afghanistan; after the whole Loki-and-space-incident; after Ultron;

This time, though, he’s not sure he can. How do you fix people’s choices and opinions? You don’t, you simply live with it. _(But he doesn’t_ live _, does he?)_

 

Have you ever had a dream that felt so realistic, you didn’t even know you were dreaming until you woke up? Tony’s had that dream for quite a while now. He’s dreamt he was an Avenger and he was doing great things, saving good people. Now that he’s awoken he can see clearly again.

 

He appreciates that _somewhere_ along the way they _have_ made all the wrong decisions. He tries to figure out what’s on himself and what’s on Captain Backstabber and what’s on Brainwashed and what’s on HYDRA, what’s on Vision, what’s on Clint, what’s on Romanov, what’s on whom, what’s on whom, what’s on whom! It never stops. It’s an ongoing list and he never gets to conclusions.

 

He knows he’s stood on the right side of this altercation. But now he also knows it **hasn’t been worth it**.

 

There’s this feeling deep in his chest, this constant feeling of suffocation. Nothing can ease it. It’s what remains of broken trust and shattered friendship. And Tony is unable to breathe again. That’s why he remains, unmoving, gathering dust together with everything else.

 

The amber liquid leaves nasty stains as it dries and the bottles gather dust. The shards of glass and the scattered remnants of the phone gather dust. So does the letter; and the shield;

Even his dreams gather dust.

The once he’s already dreamt _(he’s not an Avenger, has never been)_ and the once he’s yet to dream. He can’t see them through the grey dust particles.

He can’t get up.

 

He can’t face Rhodey—the one person that has really trusted Tony and was let down so spectacular.

He can talk to him, on a very distant level. _(Alcohol helps that matter.)_ But the important things remain unsaid on the tip of Tony’s tongue and choke him at night. _(Those words have no shape, yet, they are all over the place.)_

 

 

Nights are the worst.

Every night, he dies. And with every death, the feeling of suffocation grows.

Every night, he is reminded that he’s still a man with everything and yet nothing.

Every night, he screams at the stars, oh, he is so angry, so fucking angry, but he keeps that anger bottled up, and isn’t _anger an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured_?

Tony can tell: _It is._

 

 

He wishes they’d listened to each other. Really listened, reconsidering every word said, mulling over its true meaning.

To Tony, someone has died that day in Siberia. Someone Tony has hated and loved and looked up to his whole life. The Death of Captain America has ripped a hole into his heart, a hole deeper than even the ARC reactor. ( _I was wrong about you. The whole world was wrong about you.)_

 

He is alone now, faces the world with his back pressed against a wall. Even JARVIS is gone, and in a way, he has taken Rhodes with him. _(JARVIS is gone forever and irrevocably. He has come to terms with Vision not being JARVIS.)_

 

He wishes he knew—knew a way out of all this. He does and he considers it and he mulls it over in his head all day long, but in the end, he even lacks the energy to do _that_.

 

Time is frozen and Tony turns into stone. His eyes are glassy and his bones are prominent; and maybe, maybe he doesn’t have to do anything but wait and everything will turn out just fine on its own. Maybe, if he sits there long enough, something will change without his doings.

 

The nights are days and the days turn to nights and nobody cares. It’s just Tony down here in what has once been his home. It’s his mausoleum now; he can lay to rest here.

He will disintegrate.

 

 

But they won’t let him. He realizes someone still cares. Someone is still there. But it’s just someone and not Tony, so Tony laughs into their face, ‘cause hell, they can care all they want, he doesn’t and he doesn’t want to get up and get going. He likes the way the world stands still, frozen in midair, not moving.

He’s not up for cold turkey, but he could do with another glass of whiskey, _thank you very much_.

But Rhodey wants him to finally start _acting_ , and all Tony can thing is: _Have done all of my life, no more acting anymore, let me be_ , but of course, Rhodey means it in a different way and _hell_ , even crippled, Rhodes knows how to kick Tony’s sorry ass into motion. It’s way past mourning, Rhodey insists, and slowly, oh so slowly, Tony starts to move, to shake that thick layer of dust off his broken bones and broken trust and _hey, look at that, planet earth_ **is** _still turning!_

 

But, it turns a tad bit faster than before, or maybe it’s just Tony who moves slower now because his limps feel like they are made out of stone and weight tons.

 

Rhodey comes and Rhodey goes _(not always literally)_ and he brings food with him and takes debits away; he forces Tony to clean himself up and to take a few steps every day _(ironic, isn’t he the one who can’t walk anymore?)_ , and each day, Tony takes one small step more than the day before and the engineer starts moving again.

 

Some days he strolls through the lab/workshop and recalls every second he has spent here with Bruce, tinkering and inventing and researching.

Those are the happiest moment he experiences. They are short-lived.

Every time he thinks about the letter or the flip phone, that anger spikes and hits him right in the chest, where his arc reactor used to be. That anger is his high and it’s always followed by the low and low he gets.

 

He burns the letter and cries afterwards. He’s destroyed the only proof of those past years happening and is left in the dark all alone thereafter. He gets so low in the dark, his hands clutching ash and he weeps and weeps and doesn’t get up for two weeks after it.

He’s back to the very beginning when Rhodes had first showed up in the lab/workshop and he can see the sadness in his only friend’s eyes when Rhodey comes down there every day and brings food.

 

Every step Tony has made in the past month is reset and he starts all over again, takes little steps into the right direction, one by one; baby steps.

 

Somewhere along his way, those baby steps are just too little and he ends up with all kind of medical attention he’s never wanted, but Rhodes proves to have the stronger will.

Tony is too weak to put up a fight.

 

During that time—while he is bed-bound—he sometimes catches a glimpse of Vision lingering in front of his room, but the synthezoid never enters.

Tony is grateful.

He misses JARVIS.

 

He doesn’t go down to the lab/workshop for a very long time after his yet one more near death experience.

Rhodey won’t allow it. He’s not as forgiving anymore as he’s been two month ago. He’s hard to bear, always demanding.

He wants Tony to ditch the baby steps and take risks instead; he wants him to leap.

And maybe that’s what Tony has needed all the time: someone not caring about his sore pride and broken heart, ‘cause he’s Tony Stark and up to this point, his whole life has consisted of sore pride and broken hearts and him, Tony, being made out of iron.

 

It _feels_ like getting better. It feels like _living_ again.

 _It’s not_ , Tony knows it, but he’s back in the game and acting again. This time, he even fools Rhodey.

He starts returning to SI and he builds, he builds S.H.I.E.L.D up again, because that is something that went down and where would people like Fury and Natasha go, if there was no S.H.I.E.L.D.?

He invents new medical devices, because there are still people in coma, people the Avengers _(a very far away dream now)_ have put there.

And he moves back; back to Malibu, because that’s where Tony Stark came from, it’s the hole he’s emerged from years ago. And now, he’s returning where he belongs.

 

So one last and final time, he goes down to the lab/workshop to retrieve Captain Backstabber’s shield and now that he thinks back how he has been about to lay to rest down here, it doesn’t even affect him. That too is nothing but a very far away dream. _(Everything that’s not today is so far away...)_

 

Tony takes that shield for one last purpose and after today, he will remember Captain America as his righteous childhood idol that died in the ice.

He visits the cemetery in heavy rain, the shield in hand, and lays it to rest for good. He stays and weeps, not for a friend lost or a heart broken, but a childhood idol’s and a hero’s death.

Right then he knows, he is Tony Stark and he is made out of iron; so cold is his heart.

 

He doesn’t notice the man coming closer right away. Only when he stares down on Tony with ominously gleaming eyes, does Tony acknowledge his presence.

And right away he knows that **that** guy is different.

 

“You bury the symbol”, the stranger addresses Tony. He wears a black trench coat and a black umbrella. “All that will rest here... but a memory. A ghost to hunt you for your **failures**.”

 

Tony stops crying and turns half towards the man.

 

“This **wasn’t** my failure”, he insists.

 

“But you are here now, burying hope.”

 

“That’s ridiculous. It doesn’t have to **be** like this.” _(But who is he fooling, though. It_ **will** _be like this. How could he ever forget?)_ Nevertheless, he goes on: “We won’t always be on opposite sides. It will all be **fine**.” Tony doesn’t even believe in his own words.

 

“Hm”, the stranger makes non-committal. “I don’t think so. You cannot see all eventualities, much as you try... but what if you could...? What if you knew of another reality... where events unfolded differently...”

 

Tony narrows his eyes. “What?”

 

“In one reality you failed putting the nuclear bomb through the portal in time and New York was destroyed beyond reconstruction. Just as in this world, S.H.I.E.L.D. had been infiltrated by HYDRA. But after New York’s destruction, the Avengers turned their backs on S.H.I.E.L.D. Instead of someone stopping HYDRA, they operated undetected and brought about a lot of damage. Ultimately, the Avengers made a stand against HYDRA and won. But you died in the process, your friends mourned your passing and honored your memory with their heroic deeds.

Without you, there was no Ultron and also no Vision. Sokovia remained undisturbed.

And then Lagos happened and this time, all of the Avengers would follow Captain America’s lead when he opposed the accords. But things take a decidedly worse turn. Without your negation Secretary of State Ross took even more drastic measures. And so, the first blow was struck soon, heralding the grisly count of casualties to come.”

 

“Those fools. You can’t punch your way out of everything.”

 

“No, you can’t.

United under the banner, the Avengers would fight until their very ends. And so they did.”

 

Tony looks at the ground. He stands lost amongst gravestones.

“So I did the right thing. Times are changing. They always do. And you go with it and adapt, or else you get crushed. We had to cope with this new developments. Why couldn’t—why _can’t_ —Steve **see** that?”

 

“Perhaps because, for all his virtues... Steve Rogers was **never** one to follow orders. He is not one to be comfortable with others taking his ability to decide for himself.”

 

“But this wasn’t about someone ordering him around...”, Tony shakes his head vehemently. “It was about people having a **choice** whatever they wanted our help or not. If they are not allowed to refuse the Avengers’ intervention, we are taking **their** _ability to decide for themselves_. He should **know** that.”

 

“And perhaps in another reality, Tony Stark... he **would**...”

 

“That’s impossible. We’ve crossed the point of no return early on. There would have never been a way to solve this.”

 

“There was. And there never was a point of no return until the very end. However, in this divergent reality, you did something you did not in your **own** world.” The stranger’s gaze is fixed on Tony, his unforgiving, glowing eyes seeing through Tony’s whole facade. “You were **honest**. When you gave him your father’s pen to sign the accords, you offered him insight on your feelings and motivations in a way you have never before. You even told him about your childhood. That simple admission changed the course of history.”

 

The stranger angles his body slightly different, so he isn’t facing Tony anymore, yet, he does not turn away. He looks down on the ground where the shield is buried.

 

“Steve Rogers and you talked and listened to each other.

It is not your world, Anthony Stark. There, you were not caught up in the heat of battle because of Sergeant Barnes’ long past doings. There you saw what had happened to him and **acted**.”

 

“So I learned that he’d killed mum and... and dad?” Tony watches the stranger nod his head. Tony mulls it over.

“Then how did I forgive being betrayed? How did I face Steve’s most precious person after _knowing_ what he’s done?”

 

“ **There, you are not without friends**.

 

Captain America understood your pain as well as you understood Sergeant Barnes suffer. And, though you began the day on opposite sides... you forgot your differences, instead remembering the countless times you had battled side-by-side against overwhelming odds.

 

And you did so once again. Together, you changed the accords. Under your shared leadership, the Avengers became an unparalleled force for good; one no foe could stand against; one which quickly won the **respect** and **admiration** of those it strove to protect.”

 

The stranger made a vague gesture with his hand. “You see, I can do what you dream of, Tony Stark... I can see **all** possible outcomes. I know why you try so hard... why you look at the world from your angle. And yet, you have something I don’t. You can **cause ripples**...”

 

“But you can’t **control** a ripple!”

 

“No. And that is what life is, Tony Stark... Cherish it.

Because some of us only wait... and watch.”

 

Tony feels all the strength leave his body, and his feet give out under him. He falls to his knees, desperately looking for support. A grey gravestone offers it, cold dead stone supports his weight, while he leans against it.

 

Realization sets in. What he, Tony Stark, has had, and what he’s lost in the war.

“...my god...”

 

“Yes. I’ve always found it both beautiful and terrible how one decision... one small difference can change so much. I suppose nothing is truly insignificant. The laws of cause and effect. Every action with its cascading ripples through the world...”

 

“Why?”, Tony interrupts, tears burning behind his eyelids. “Why have you come here? Just to torture me?”

Now those tears mix with the rain.

The clouds high up in the sky are dark. No sunlight can break through them.

 

Captain America has truly died.

 

“ _I’m here to mark a great passage and to pay my tribute_.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, whatcha thinking of this one, guys?  
> I try to decide whatever I should write a longer fanfic, connected to this one (set after this still-one-shot), where Steve and his merry little gang comes back and shit hits the fan...  
> Okay, obviously, I’m on Team Iron Man, but I would try to look at the situation from every person’s angle... and there would probably—like for sure—be a lot of everybody hurt and especially Tony hurt...  
> Hmm... still have to make my mind up about that, though...


End file.
